Arriving at the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writer's Conference, fear surged through my body. I had questions of God. What am I doing here? I'm too old. With 475 fellow conferees, many who have multiple works published, I asked, Who will be my friend and encourage me?

Sometimes life isn't pretty. Thorns lurk to the side to puncture us when we aren't expecting it just as those near this rose. A classic example of this happened a few years ago, before my youngest granddaughter was old enough for a cell phone. Something awful happened that left me unable to focus on the peace of God. I panicked.

To find refuge in God means you become so immersed in His presence, so convinced of His goodness, so devoted to His Lordship that you find even the cave is a perfectly safe place to be because He is there with you.

A few weeks my Mom passed away. She was never a sweet little old lady. Oh, occasionally she offered up a kind smile, but she was more of a no-nonsense gal. And she certainly wasn’t little. Not her physical stature. Not her personality. And positively not in the way she approached life. That’s why we were shocked when her nurse practitioner told us Mom’s kidneys were failing and she only had a short time to live. The diagnosis caught us off guard. Not our mother. The strongest woman we ever knew.

Morning is dawning on my entry into the ocean of social media known as blogging.

With months of preparation behind me, and feeling assured that my writing is how God leads me to share my faith, I begin releasing work I’ve toiled over, prayed about and asked my Heavenly Father to use as He will. Blue skies are above and placid waters surround me. It looks like smooth sailing ahead.